To wonder if work deliberately send upsetting emails on Friday

[Arbesque]

The results of a promotion competition at work were announced on Friday afternoon. So lots of people going home upset for the weekend. I said to a colleague that it was a bit mean and they could have waited until Monday, but she reckons it's deliberate so that people will calm down over the weekend and not kick up a fuss in work.

Apparently it's common practice in lots of workplaces to announce bad news just before the weekend.

Has anyone else heard this?

We were just talking about this, the ten to five pm emails you get on a Friday so the sender can clear off before you get a chance to speak to them.

I try to preempt this by contacting people just after lunch, sometimes it works.

I didn't know about this but I was recently made redundant on a Friday!

Bustards

Bastards**

Weird autocorrect. 🤣

Redundancies at our old work place were always done on Friday - to stop people talking - this was the reason we were given at least.

They seemed to forget we all had whatsapp / telegram and everyone's personal phone numbers. It did not go in their favour as we went in en masse to the meetings and they had to go back and change their "plan". Redundancies were still made but at much less numbers.

It is not best practice, particularly in industries with a high number of staff with mental health issues

Yup my boss did this the other week. Sent an email with contentious content when she knew we were finished for the week, then went on annual leave.

We used to sarcastically call it a fun time Friday email. It’s so you don’t moan to colleagues on work time and/or rile each other up instead you come home speak about it on own time and it’s less incendiary by Monday.

yes they do.
it's part of any communication training I attended.
bad news to be given in the afternoon at the end of the week. ideally at a time where scheduled it maintenance takes place.
this is to avoid over-emotional or abusive feedback and some time to reflect before consulting legal/union.

it's shit having really bad news hanging over you for the weekend

It's a weird one. I have never worked for company thats announced redundancy my email. Anyone impacted has always been spoke to first. Either because their job is at risk or (later) they are being made redundant. An email would be making anyone else, aware. I think these sorts of things should always be face to face first.

But, I think certain things are best just before people go home tbh. But it depends on what the office is like. I have worked some places where announcing a promotion would have just led to the people who missed out moaning and bitching and gossiping. Even if everyone else can tell the decision was right/fair.

As much as employers can be dickheads, so can employees.

It often comes out of the blue so it's not like people were dreading anything anyway.

We got an agreement from our employer not to send out significant comms on Fridays, as it meant people were unable to ask questions or check out ramifications until Monday.
However promotions announcements on a Friday is probably good sense, as those who have wounds to lick can do that in private.

(If you want the absolute worst, it was the teacher I knew on a one year contract. The interviews for the permanent post were scheduled for the same day as the year 12 parents' evening. He didn't get it, and had an hour to recover before doing parents' evening for a group he was now only going to be teaching for a few more weeks.)

I agree. But why not tell staff on a Thursday? That way they have some mutual support from colleagues and can ask relevant questions of their managers and HR and then process it all over the weekend.

Dropping a bombshell then leaving them adrift for a couple of days is cruel.

Also bad practice to have a 'difficult' conversation in the employee's own time.

Had that done to me a couple of times. First time I was away with my boss doing stock counting over a weekend. Boss decided to tell me over dinner that I 'lacked commitment'. Totally failed to see the irony that I was in another country working unpaid over the weekend. He didn't explain what form this extra commitment was supposed to take.

I have come to the conclusion that lacking commitment just means 'You haven't done anything wrong but I don't like you'.

Second time I was told I was being made redundant while on another business trip on the other side of the Atlantic. Boss phoned me at a time convenient to him forgetting that it was early hours of the morning for me.

Last laugh was on me for that one because I had been with the company for more than 20 years. Company had strict redundancy payment rules and my redundancy payment blew his salary budget out of the water!

My work don't do this.

I received bad new from boss last Monday and he told me he had deliberately waited until Monday as he didnt want to tell me on the Friday before the weekend.

Sounds awful getting bad news on a Friday. It would ruin my weekend.

Makes sure that any time that someone is unhappy and unproductive as a result of bad news is during some of their few hours off, and not when they're at work and it might marginally impact the bearer of bad news.

Sometimes it's probably the case, sometimes it's just going to be that it's when something finally got through the approval process (or whatever lengthy thing it goes through) and the communications can be sent out. Coincidence, in other words, and wanting to go ahead and get the word out rather than waiting til Monday.

Announcing bad news on a Friday is NOT about giving people time to calm down, it fucks them up, screws their weekend when they are also not able to contact their union.

I never opened any email after COB on a Friday when teaching.I spent the time after classes prepping for Monday and deal with the shit on Monday morning.

I don't know about work but I have noticed our local council always deliver the annual council tax bill by hand on a Saturday. It can't be coincidence, and I wonder if they get a lot of angry calls?

I think it is different for redundancy and other business news e.g restructure, but internal jobs when 6 or 7 people in the same team go for 1 job, Friday makes sense sometimes they all go to the pub others it’s a mixture but many ask if they can go home early and we always say yes.

I used to have a boss who would wait until Friday afternoon if I'd done something wrong and say "I need to speak to you on Monday" in an ominous tone, thus ruining the weekend for me. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Classic bullying tactic as well.

Wouldn't it be patronising for them to hold back information by 3 days?

Many times they will have had info for a while before planning the release. The Friday afternoon info might well have been known on Monday afternoon. There's a whole set of machinery here.

The point is that they usually hold it back until Friday afternoon so they don't have to deal with the immediate reaction.

Wouldn't it be patronising for them to hold back information by 3 days?

But, in the case of redundancies they will have already been sitting on that information for a week.

In my case, I was made aware of the redundancies a day before the announcement - I had a meeting with our CEO and raised it - they were due to go on annual leave for two weeks (ie the entire redundancy period) from the Monday. Guess who started their annual leave within minutes of our meeting finishing?

Our entire HR team pissed off as well from Friday COB and only were "working" when there were actual redundancy meetings. Unfortunately for them, they missed the e-mail with a colleague's sick note on - which results in a discrimination pay out.

Some companies do it for ethical reasons, some do not.

However, I do not believe staff should be dealing with work issues over their weekend.

Why not send out the good news emails on a Friday?

That's disgraceful behaviour and should be subject to a warning from HR.